Department of Psychology, Lafayette College, Oechsle Hall, 350 Hamilton Street, Easton, Pennsylvania, 18042, USA.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2017 Dec;24(6):1964-1970. doi: 10.3758/s13423-017-1269-9.
Past research on the effects of articulatory suppression on working memory for nonverbal sounds has been characterized by discrepant findings, which suggests that multiple mechanisms may be involved in the rehearsal of nonverbal sounds. In two experiments we examined the potential roles of two theoretical mechanisms of verbal working memory-articulatory rehearsal and attentional refreshing-in the maintenance of memory for short melodies. In both experiments, participants performed a same-different melody comparison task. During an 8-s retention interval, interference tasks were introduced to suppress articulatory rehearsal, attentional refreshing, or both. In Experiment 1, only the conditions that featured articulatory suppression resulted in worse memory performance than in a control condition, and the suppression of both attentional refreshing and articulatory rehearsal concurrently did not impair memory more than articulatory suppression alone. Experiment 2 reproduced these findings and also confirmed that the locus of interference was articulatory and not auditory (i.e., the interference was not attributable to the sound of participants' own voices during articulatory suppression). Both experiments suggested that articulatory rehearsal played a role in the maintenance of melodies in memory, whereas attentional refreshing did not. We discuss potential theoretical implications regarding the mechanisms used for the rehearsal of nonverbal sounds in working memory.
过去关于发音抑制对非言语声音工作记忆影响的研究结果存在差异，这表明可能涉及多种机制来复述非言语声音。在两项实验中，我们研究了言语工作记忆的两个理论机制——发音复述和注意刷新——在短旋律记忆维持中的潜在作用。在两项实验中，参与者都执行了相同-不同旋律比较任务。在 8 秒的保持间隔期间，引入干扰任务以抑制发音复述、注意刷新或两者。在实验 1 中，只有表现出发音抑制的条件导致记忆表现比对照条件差，而同时抑制注意刷新和发音复述并不比单独抑制发音复述更损害记忆。实验 2 再现了这些发现，并证实干扰的位置是发音的而不是听觉的（即干扰不是由于参与者在发音抑制期间自己声音的声音）。这两个实验都表明，发音复述在记忆中维持旋律方面发挥了作用，而注意刷新则没有。我们讨论了关于在工作记忆中复述非言语声音所使用的机制的潜在理论意义。
